


Meaning is not in things (but in between them)

by syllogismos



Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: Addiction, Alternate Universe, Angst and Fluff and Smut, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Shower Sex, Skin Hunger, Soul Bond, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:02:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2845448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syllogismos/pseuds/syllogismos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It happened because, in those days, neither Brian nor Curt had been at all inclined to turn down anything in the form of a brightly-coloured pill and a glittering promise.</p>
<p>It happened because they were bored and thought themselves invincible.</p>
<p>The trouble entered because: it couldn't be undone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meaning is not in things (but in between them)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [colbert](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colbert/gifts).



It happened because, in those days, neither Brian nor Curt had been at all inclined to turn down anything in the form of a brightly-coloured pill and a glittering promise.

It happened because they were bored and thought themselves invincible.

The trouble entered because: it couldn’t be undone.

* * *

Curt didn’t open his eyes when he woke. It wasn’t a good idea, not with such a black hole of a hangover. He waited.

He waited for his head to throb, and it didn’t; the light seeping through his eyelids did so gently, didn’t hammer. Perhaps…perhaps he wasn’t hung over at all. He _ached_ , but it was an athletic ache, as if, on some parallel plane of existence, he’d run a marathon. His skin was tight and raw, like a sunburn, and worse where it was exposed to air. It didn’t hurt at all where… Curt shuffled back into the question mark curve of Brian’s body. Brian, still sleeping, pressed closer in turn, snuffling his nose into the hair at Curt’s nape. Where he breathed bloomed warm on Curt’s skin and seeped beneath, treacle-slow and sweet.

He slept without dreaming.

* * *

Curt woke with a pounding heart and a wall-less, bottomless void inside him. Brian was gone. He rolled into the space Brian had left, and the sheets were still warm. He could smell Brian’s sweat and his hairspray and feel the stale make-up creased into Brian’s eyelids; he had the urge to rub it off _himself_ , but his arms felt heavy and weak, and the tile was hard and uncomfortable under his butt and _What in the bloody hell had he been thinking, getting out of bed with a hangover this bad?_ Brian tried to stand up, but his feet wouldn’t cooperate, the floor wouldn’t cooperate, and it felt like he had two heads to balance on his shoulders.

Shoulders, he had two of them too. And there were fingertips touching one, trailing to his neck a river of soothing, then a whole hand at his cheek and fingers in his hair and he could breathe again because the breath was coming from another pair of lungs, sealed to his by a mouth. The vice of legs around his hips gave him the strength to grind up against the cock as hard as his. He grabbed for skin and wasn’t disappointed, dragging his nails to make furrows in Curt’s back. Curt arched and twisted, wrestling Brian to his back on the tile. He pinned Brian with his elbows and pulled his lips from Brian’s to pant against his mouth instead, each pulse of his breath matched with a pulse of his hips, both picking up tempo until it wasn’t enough. Curt stopped and slithered down, resting for a second with his lips pressed to the centre of Brian’s chest, his chin digging into Brian’s solar plexus. He half-knelt and reached down to pull at Brian’s knees, tugging and pulling until he was between them and could slip his cock between the tight globes of Brian’s arse and thrust. He had to start slowly because his cock head was slippery and slick and every nerve in it ignited when it dragged in Brian’s cleft. Brian gasped below him, and his hips bucked. He reached down and pulled at Curt’s buttocks, urging him into a harder and faster rhythm, spreading his legs wider and canting his hips to help. Curt came, biting a bruise into Brian’s collarbone, and he wailed, because the need still burned inside him. He couldn’t– He had to– He nearly choked himself on Brian’s cock, and it was too much because he’d just come, and everything was so sensitive, and his own balls throbbed as Brian emptied into his mouth.

Black descended.

* * *

“ _Shit_ ,” Brian hissed, and it might have been five minutes, or it might have been five hours. “I think we’re stuck together.”

“Mmph?” Curt lifted his head from Brian’s groin. His hair was stuck, his mouth tasted– He retched. Brian scrambled, and Curt winced as they separated, his scalp suffering the worst of it. Brian vomited into the toilet, so Curt used the sink. His skin was burning again, and Brian wasn’t moving from his slump over the toilet.

“Brian.”

Brian turned his head, still resting his cheek on the toilet seat. _What the_ fuck _happened?_ his brain screamed.

“I don’t know, man. I don’t know.”

Brian’s eyes went wide. Curt stepped forward and stroked his hair, then held him by the chin and looked into his eyes, holding his gaze deliberately. _Up with you. Shower._

Brian startled to his feet, pushing Curt away, but he swayed uncertainly and accepted the arm slung around his waist.

_Far out. You can hear me!_ Curt squeezed Brian tight against his side to emphasize the point.

“You’re bloody bonkers,” Brian protested, a quiver of genuine fear in his voice behind the cover of petulant protest.

Curt turned on the spray and stepped into it, pulling Brian in behind him. He tilted his face up, into the water.

_You try it now._ He grinned, too many teeth, and Brian tried to step back, but there was only so much room. Curt touched his finger to Brian’s nose and traced it down: lips, chin, Adam’s apple, collarbone. He veered to the left for a nipple and rubbed circles around it while he took his own dick in hand, stroking from base to tip. Brian stiffened as if electrified. Curt looked down; as he continued to stroke, Brian’s dick took on a rosier hue, thickened, lengthened.

_What the fuck?_

Curt grinned again, in answer, and pulled Brian back into the spray. When Curt released his dick in exchange for the soap, Brian grunted with displeasure.

“You can feel it, can’t you?”

Brian didn’t answer, so Curt soaped his chest and arms, humming “Satellite of Love.” He washed Brian’s cock and balls, almost squirming at his own gentle teasing. He turned Brian around and washed his back, letting suds run down his cleft and the backs of his thighs. Brian relaxed by small increments, but when Curt set the soap aside and pressed up behind him, thighs to thighs, front to back, Curt’s arms around Brian’s narrow waist, Brian finally sagged into the embrace, his head lolling back on Curt’s shoulder.

_Pay attention now._ Curt pinched one of Brian’s nipples, then soothed both with the pads of two fingers. Part one.

Part two: Curt took his hands from Brian, ignoring the whimper of protest, and moved his hands to his own nipples, tweaking them to stiffness, rolling them under his fingertips. In concert, he pressed forward, and Brian thrust his arse back. They leaned forward together, forearms on tile, Curt’s outside of Brian’s. Curt was plastered to Brian’s back, and when he reached around to take Brian’s hardening prick in his fist, it was almost _too_ good. He couldn’t help but snap his hips forward, rubbing his cock between Brian’s thighs.

Brian moaned and writhed underneath him. “Fuck,” he turned his head to the side, blinking against a stream of water dripping into his eye. “I can feel me, and you– Jesus, _fuck_.”

“I _know_ ,” Curt growled, sucking on the knobs of Brian’s spine at the base of his neck and working his cock with long strokes. He picked up a foot and braced it on the ledge of the tub so he could get closer and thrust harder.

Brian fell apart. “Oh _fuck_ , I’m close– Please–” Curt pushed into the bond and Brian’s desperation broke over him in a wave, almost a tsunami. They were both there, desperate together, on the edge, teetering.

_Come_ , Curt urged.

Brian came into Curt’s fist, and Curt pulsed with it too. His knees transmuted to rubber first, then jelly; his whole pelvis was flooded with pleasure.

It was only when Brian reached back that Curt realized he hadn’t come himself. The touch of Brian’s hand was too rough and hard, but Brian knew that instantly. The next thing Curt knew was hot wetness, half the nerves in his dick screaming bloody murder, the other half singing _hallelujah_.

_Come on._ Brian tilted his head back and his throat spasmed around the head of Curt’s cock as he pulled him in deeper. _You taste so good._

Curt came and destroyed the world. There was nothing left but his dick and Brian’s mouth, but it wasn’t like it mattered. He didn’t need anything else.

* * *

Shannon didn’t stop watching them, after that orgy. It took diligence and an eye for detail to work it out, to distinguish between what had existed for a lark (or lust) and for the cameras, before, and what was new, raw and honest, tender and true.

She noticed the first clue at a press conference. Brian had the helm and was performing beautifully, although the balance of cheeky insouciance and genuine annoyance in his answers was weighted further to the latter than usual. Curt was silent beside him, nothing unusual in that either.

Shannon missed the end of the next question. Brian had tensed at the start of it, and under the table where none of the press could see, Curt’s hand appeared inside Brian’s jacket, then under his shirt, rubbing small circles into his lower back. Brian relaxed instantly, but Curt didn’t take his hand away. Shannon cleared the room for them when it was over. When the only thing left to do was to fetch them and leave, she cracked the door and popped her head in. Curt was leaning into Brian’s side, head on his shoulder, Curt’s whole arm now wrapped around Brian’s waist, under jacket and untucked shirt. Both had their eyes closed; Brian held Curt’s free hand in his lap, his long fingers wrapped all the way around Curt’s wrist and his thumb tracing circles into Curt’s palm.

When Shannon called them, they sighed, almost in unison, and followed her out, hand-in-hand. Brian didn’t even fix his shirt.

On the tour, they fell into a routine. They fell asleep together and woke up together, always naked, one curled around the other, just as Shannon had found them that first time. One afternoon she had to wake them early (flat tire on one of the vans; equipment might be delayed arriving at the venue). She took the muffled grunt in answer to her knock as permission to open the door, but it had only been coincidence. Brian was on his back, both his hands pinned above his head by Curt’s. Shannon couldn’t see Brian’s face, only his long neck exposed. Curt was riding Brian’s cock slowly, just rocking in his lap, Brian’s knees propped up to support him from behind. Shannon closed the door slowly and waited outside. She heard them come at the same time but didn’t believe it until Brian emerged in his dressing gown in less than a minute, glowing and looking for a glass of water.

Jerry didn’t like Curt sharing the stage with Brian every night. The pair of them wasn’t the investment he’d made; his interest was in Brian and Brian alone. Eventually, he put his foot down. For a couple of shows, Curt sulked on the bus while Brian performed—Brian taking poised, untouched, and disinterested to a new level of art. After the show, he wasn’t energized, but pale and deflated, and Shannon found herself orchestrating an excuse to take him back to the bus, back to Curt.

Curt stood when Brian stepped on, but he said nothing. He stripped Brian of his costume, zipper after zipper after button. When Brian was naked from the waist up, he pulled his own T-shirt over his head and tossed it to the side, then pulled Brian into a hug, chest flush against chest. Brian squeezed his eyes shut and stumbled forward until Curt back’s hit the wall. Something in their way fell and clattered, and Shannon jumped to attention and took her already belated escape.

* * *

The studio sessions were supposed to help: measured doses of separation. Learn to ration it, learn to control it. But instead they were torment. Curt rebelled against the glass between them and the soundproofing, all the more because _they didn’t need it_. When Brian thought _Oh fuck, not again_ and Curt was still in the middle of it, too late to fix it, too late to back out, stumbling under the weight of his own disappointment _and_ Brian’s, what could he do but lash out? Because Brian was pretending for Jerry and for all the fucking fuckers in their fucking suits, all of them watching the two of them with Brian pretending he didn’t know exactly how desperately Curt was struggling inside his own head, trying to save a hissing tangle of cats tied up in a laundry sack from tumbling into the swift-running river and drowning.

Curt simply couldn’t do measured and rationed. His inner mechanics didn’t have a counterbalance for the weight of his desire for Brian, and he couldn’t contain it. It was unshielded plutonium, a radiating and lethal poison.

When Brian watched him drive away, he felt as if bubbles were rising in the marrow of his bones, an angry, tidal froth. They burst in organized clusters, overtures of tiny, brutal, stabbing pains.

After, cocaine kept him alive, but it wasn’t enough to live.

* * *

The years didn’t pass them by untouched. Change was inevitable. Compromise was a metaphysical necessity, given their condition. In the end, they learned to orbit each other, not quite twinned stars but moons around a common planet.

When Curt came back from Berlin, it was enough to watch him from below the stage. Being within a hundred metres of him made Brian’s blood bubble and sing, and he had to school himself quite sternly to keep a smile from bending his mouth into something too public for his private joy. When he lost the battle and couldn’t contain himself any longer, he turned up his collar and left.

“Tommy” booked extra shows in New York because Curt was there, now watching _him_ from below or from the wings. If they’d had to speak, he might not have been able to do it, but he didn’t have to say anything. “Tommy” only had to scribble his hotel and room number onto a scrap of paper and slip it into Shannon’s palm, and Shannon slipped it to Curt, and for one night in too many years they resumed their places, skin to skin, and didn’t go to sleep hungry.

**Author's Note:**

> This got ~~more than~~ a little strange ~~and tropey~~ and _slightly_ angsty, but I hope it still hits some buttons for you, my Curt/Kurt-confusing friend! THIS IS YOUR PENANCE.
> 
> Happy Yuletide! <3
> 
> And you know that person in the thread who said every time they rewatch _Velvet Goldmine_ they have to lie down for a month? That is me now; I have given myself the sads.


End file.
